


Make Me Feel The Same

by Katherine



Category: Apple Candy - Ben Lee (Song)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Scent names, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4030615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On full moon nights those of them within range come together to be a pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Me Feel The Same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WildAndFreeHearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildAndFreeHearts/gifts).



> Thank you to within_a_dream for beta reading.

They are not wolves, but are similar enough to those in form and habits to take on the name for the times they are on four legs. Nor are they human, at the other times, but a parallel similarity applies.

On full moon nights those of them within range come together to be a pack. It is taboo for them to meet at other times, or ever in human form. Only the smallest units of family can be together in those ways: a parent or parents with children not yet grown; an adult with parent, or other much-loved older wolf, grown past providing for itself; or adults who are promised lovers to each other.

Here as wolves, they don't need names that are sounds, only their individual designations by scent. These are usually constant from puphood, sometimes changed by a young adult coming into its own, and kept thereafter.

The one she watches, tonight as before, has a scent name that's the vividness of having one's nose in an apple blossom, with the delicate reminder of honey to come. His promised-lover carries the scent name of Saltmarsh hay on a cold morning. The look of that one's fur matches closely enough: dry brown-beige patched with whitish grey. She herself is on the old side for an unpartnered wolf, twists of grey in her fur from age as well as natural colouration.

This pack that exists three nights each moon pack does not set an overall order of dominance; they have no alpha leader or queen wolf. Yet there are always eddies, individual settling with individual or in relation to a familial group.

She and the one who she watches have danced together before, the playfighting that always has a whisper of setting hierarchy at the base of it, from puphood on. His teeth caught her flank, one time; her awareness of them together was overlaid and linked with the bright scent of her own blood.

Tonight instead of wrestling they join together in hunting. A hare is not usually much trouble, not least with two wolves chasing it, and a third nearby, ready to turn the hare back within sight if it zags into the trees.

She and the one she wants hunt it together, leaping after the jinking prey. In pursuit she and the other are side by side, mostly, now again she drawing further ahead, now him, but they catch the prey together. Saltmarsh slips from the trees (with the zig zags of the hare, they haven't actually travelled far from the pack gathering) and joins them. They share the meat together.

The morning that follows, at home in the chair by the window, a bitter-dark cup of tea next to her and a favourite book in her hand, she imagines how that hunt might have felt in snow. Reading _The Call of the Wild_ tends to set her fancies in winter. That, and also that winters have an exaggerated literary tinge of loneliness. There is a turn of the moon to wait, now, until the next time the pack comes together, and she can watch and hope and whisper in closer.

*

This time is the second night of the full moon before those two join the gathering. A loud squabble among three other wolves intervenes, and she takes a long loop around that disturbance before not quite shyly stepping in close to who she wants. He accepts her greeting touch of nose to his neck, and three quick flicks of tongue there, but he is gazing away, to where Saltmarsh is on the other side of the squabbling.

Once that has settled itself (she doesn't note what wolf made themselves the victor, as that is not a network that matters to her at the moment) Saltmarsh moves to near a tree for a few moments before joining them, his scent more sharp.

He and his promised leave first, this night. After a fairly short time she is one of the few left in the clearing, the only one in this corner, now. She moves to the rough-barked tree he relieved himself against the roots of, her muzzle opening as she breathes in the sharp-sour scent before she squats there herself.

*

Then there is a moon when neither of them come to the pack gathering, so she throws herself into greeting wolves she saw less recently. Most in the area do come to the pack each moon, and any who are visiting make their way in also, but there could be reasons that keep them from it beyond whim. She will not ask those present. None would know, or claim to be aware, if the reasons are human-form matters. Nor will she ask the males' secrets, when she meets them next.

She sets herself down in a curve between two roots that show on the surface, wiggles until she's made herself a small, dust-softened hollow in the ground there, and mulls over what she is willing to change, as well as what not, along with the things that she might be. To be with them in human form as well she is willing to take whatever spoken and written name she needs to. She will copy whatever Saltmarsh's human name is, and answer to it, if that will bind her into place with both of them.

*

Another month on, and the pack greets the turning season with harmonies. Saltmarsh and the one she wants angle themselves wider apart as she comes up to them, opening a place for her between them, with them both. They all three howl together, joining in the notes of the pack, and she is shivering with want and the beauty of their combining song.

*

If they accept her, they will have to talk about human-form consequences. Lives together, and places to be doing that living, and how to go about the raising of young if they all choose that future.

Tonight, still as wolves, they did not have that need to talk yet. Soon, she hopes: and she frisks forward, her tail its friendliest curve, and dips her forelegs and the front part of her in front of them, inviting them to play.


End file.
